How much do you think a sturdy steel frame with reasonably precise synchronized lifting motors with a combined capacity of over 300lbs designed to put up with years of use and abuse should cost?
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/311870898/T_feet_electric_...
Probably best to leave out the garish tabletop and find your own, though.
As someone who weighs close to 300lbs, I can also tell you you won't find a good office chair rated for 300lbs for under $100. Go look at the specs on office chairs closely. Most of them will be rated for less than 250lbs with no more than a few hours/day of use.
If you want your own crappy top (planks? really?), the actual cost of a GeekDesk Max is $725-745. The non-max (275lbs lifting capacity) is $525-549. You want a vastly inferior product to save $225?
It's a 6.5' x 2.6' foot surface, it holds a lot more than a laptop.
Are you a programmer? Do you like it when a non-programmer tells you "just do X", because it must obviously be so simple?
Why, then, are you so sure that you can come up with a better design than mechanical engineers without even studying the problem?
It just feels like these ergonomic goods producing companies are selling chairs/tables with super high markups ($900-$1500) for ergo chairs - really?). Seems like you have a better handle on the production costs of a hight-adjustable table. How much does it really cost?
In the latter case, you would usually synchronize their controller clocks, and specify the motors/cylinders/whatever to both have a very tight positioning tolerance. Then you mount the surface being moved on a system of bearings that have enough freedom s.t. it will self center automatically, absorbing the tiny bit of misalignment that can (and WILL) occur.
However, in my experience it's almost always better to use two passive, i.e. non-lifting, supports along with one actuator in the middle that is twice as powerful. In heavy lift applications it often comes down to getting a single cylinder that is powerful enough without blowing the cost through the roof. Nevertheless, if you look at marine architecture, airport gangways, earth moving machinery etc. you will often see just a single lifting point.
And in three paragraphs we've gone from office chair pistons to front-end loaders! Yay HN! As I said... for what it's worth ;-)
Making shit is expensive unless you're doing it at scale, the majority of people don't care about adjustable desks so the marketshare is by nature a niche. You then have staffing costs, design costs, distribution costs.
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S89806740/#/S1980...
Over 5 years, a $1000 desk is about $0.55/day. It's strange to me how many people think it's outrageous for such a critical tool to cost that much.
I suspect they're thinking about how a $100 desk is 1/10 that price, whether it's amortized over 5 years or not.
This is difficult to believe, given that new cheap office/task chairs start at that price. Do you have a link?
They probably wouldn't make a good drop-in replacement for office chairs since they aren't on wheels. On the other hand, footrests are nice...
To be clear, the IKEA table is probably made of a composite wood, not a proper slab of wood, but I agree with your point. Material cost should not dominate the price of a desk.
To be honest though, I think the value of a motorized desk is being overblown. I have just put my desk up on 4 stacks of office paper in the past; worked great. Everyone needs new expensive toys though...
That's what you say to suckers with your arm around their shoulders. I hope you don't mention that philosophy before you get the quote, because people are willing to sell you shit at any price.
I invite you to try to just break even selling adjustable 100kg steel desks to end-users at $150 each.